Oregon Women and Their Stories of Persistence, Grit and Grace
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Portland State University PDXScholar Dissertations and Theses Dissertations and Theses Spring 5-18-2015 Ordinary Women/Extraordinary Lives: Oregon Women and Their Stories of Persistence, Grit and Grace Shannon Moon Leonetti Portland State University Follow this and additional works at: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds Part of the Nonfiction Commons, Women's History Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Leonetti, Shannon Moon, "Ordinary Women/Extraordinary Lives: Oregon Women and Their Stories of Persistence, Grit and Grace" (2015). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 2342. https://doi.org/10.15760/etd.2339 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Ordinary Women/Extraordinary Lives: Oregon Women and Their Stories of Persistence, Grit and Grace by Shannon Moon Leonetti A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Thesis Committee: Michael McGregor, Chair Paul Collins Lorraine Mercer Portland State University 2015 Abstract This thesis tells the stories of five Oregon women who transcended the customary roles of their era. Active during the waning years of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, each woman made a difference in the world around them. Their stories have either not been told or just given a passing glance. These tales are important because they inform us about our society on the cusp of the twentieth century. Hattie Crawford Redmond was the daughter of a freed slave who devoted herself to the fight for women’s suffrage. Minnie Mossman Hill was the first woman steamboat pilot west of the Mississippi. Mary Francis Isom was a local librarian who went to France to deliver books to American soldiers. Ann and May Shogren were sisters who brought high fashion to Portland and defied the gender and social rules in both their business and personal lives. These women were not the only ones who accomplished extraordinary things during their lives. They are a tiny sample of Oregon women who pushed beyond discrimination, hardship and gender limits to earn their place in Oregon’s history. i This is dedicated to my mother who is always with me, Jan Stennick, my walking partner and best friend, and Richard, my husband, my strength and the most patient man I have ever known. ii Acknowledgements This work could not have been done without the help and support of the members of the faculty of the Portland State University Department of Creative Writing. Special thanks to my advisor and teacher Michael McGregor who has given me nothing less than his constant encouragement through the entire program and for his tireless effort in helping me read, edit and revise this thesis. I would like to thank my committee members Michael McGregor, Paul Collins and Lorraine Mercer for their willingness to give their time, help and advice. Finally, I owe a ton of thanks to the research staffs at the Oregon Historical Museum, the Multnomah County Library, Connie Lenzen from the Genealogical Forum of Oregon, volunteers at the Oregon Maritime Museum and the anonymous archivists from local newspapers who never failed to respond to my pleas for help. And, thank you to Jan Dilg, Kimberly Jenson and Patricia Schechter, three women who know everything about women’s history, for their patient answers to my persistent, naïve questions. Thanks to you all! iii Table of Contents List of Figures . v Introduction. .1 Minnie Mossman Hill: The First Female Steamboat Pilot West of the Mississippi . 5 Harriet Crawford Redmond: Suffragist And Cornerstone of the Portland Community . .39 Mary Francis Isom: The Good Soldier . .79 The Shogren Sisters: Modistes Fashioning a Business in Portland . 103 Works Cited . .127 iv List of Figures Figure 1: Minnie Mossman Hill. 5 Figure 2: Harriett Crawford Redmond . 39 Figure 3. Mary Francis Isom. 79 Figure 4: Ann and May Shogren . 103 Figure 5: Ann Shogren . 103 Figure 6: May Shogren . 103 v Introduction to “Ordinary Women/Extraordinary Lives” Someone is always asking me, “Why did you write about these women?” Well, I chose these women because I have always loved independent, outspoken women who, when challenged or ignored, went ahead and did what they wanted to do because they were passionate about it whatever it was; real women, flaws and all, who rose above the ordinary through their own grit and determination. When I looked back to my own childhood for strong and irreverent women (women I admired even as a young girl) three came to mind: my mother, my grandmother (my mother’s mother) and Pippi Longstocking. Well, Pippi had Astrid Lindgren to tell her story but no one tried to tell my mother or grandmother’s stories. When I asked personal questions, their answers were always something like, “No one wants to hear about me. What did I ever do?” They didn’t think their lives made a difference and I was too young to realize they were wrong. Somewhere along the line, I began to notice just how many “ordinary” women there were whose lives had made a difference. Their stories were seldom acknowledged or recorded but they were powerful testaments to what a woman could be or do if she was willing to just go for it. The women in the following stories were these sorts of women. Of all the stories I came across when I started my search for women with a local connection, these four were the ones that made my stomach flip flop with admiration. These were the untold lives I wanted to know more about. It didn’t 1 take me long to recognize that these particular women illustrated a unique piece of history that helped make Oregon what it is today. At first glance, I didn’t think they had anything significant in common. They all arrived in the Pacific Northwest as children and lived in Portland during the last half of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th century. As far as I know, they never knew each other, although some of their paths crossed during the years when women were working for the right to vote. Two were married; the others were single. They were a steamboat pilot, a librarian, a black clubwoman/suffragist and a pair of sisters who were tailors. What they did share was that each one, in her own way, challenged the limitations placed on her by society. At first I thought their obstacles were all gender-driven but that wasn’t true. While two of the women challenged the barriers to what were considered men’s jobs, the other women had to confront the scrutiny of their female peers when they didn’t fit the stereotypes of what a woman ought to be or do. Minnie Hill didn’t want to be a schoolteacher. She wanted to pilot a steamboat. Hattie Redmond, the daughter of a freed slave, wouldn’t settle for merely being someone’s wife or caretaker so she took on suffrage and Portland clubwomen when that wasn’t what a black woman did. Mary Francis Isom’s passion was to deliver books to anyone who wanted or needed them and she was willing to leave behind the comfortable walls of the Portland Public Library to deliver them to wounded soldiers on the battlefields of France. And the Shogren sisters didn’t want to be “just seamstresses working in someone else’s sewing 2 room” so they opened their own haute couture business, designing one-of-a-kind dresses for women all over the United States, while building a real estate empire equal to any man’s of their time. Not one of these women expected society to provide her with anything other than a fair chance to do what she wanted to do and what she was capable of doing. Why is it important that we cast a backward glance at what might be considered the first generation of the women’s movement in Oregon? Because these women, and others just like them, were the forerunners of a future generation of feminists, women who would push open closed doors. How different were their experiences from ours? Not so different. They were raised by hardworking parents, who found ways to educate their children whether at home or in school. Their drive was not fuelled by whether they were raised in privileged families or by parents who struggled just to put food on the table. They all arrived in adulthood with a Christian-like viewpoint to do what was right, morally and financially, and to make the best of their God-given brains and skills. While their lives make good tales, they were difficult to reconstruct because there was so little written record. I have tried to balance what can be known for sure through newspapers, government documents and a few letters and ledgers with the stories they told their families or their families told others. Their experiences will take readers to a different era to meet women who were not that much different from the women around us today. They were women we can admire, women of courage, wit and skill. They were ordinary women who led 3 extraordinary lives. They were Oregon women who demonstrated persistence, grit and grace. 4 (Figure 1) Minnie Mossman Hill 1865-1946 5 Minnie Mossman Hill: The First Female Steamboat Pilot West of the Mississippi Like many children who grew up in the 1950s, I was enthralled by television.